When agency people could not find anything to undermine my merit, they looked for personality disorders.

Based on a true experience of a dedicated worker who just could not give up...

A few years back, Sheila got a job as a social media executive in a reputed IT firm. Sheila was chosen to work for them after successfully completing a course in digital marketing from an institution run by the same company. Sheila was practically thrilled at first, but soon realized she had made a mistake. 

The beginning of the journey

Being a creative-minded person Sheila took a risk of training herself in commercial art even after completing post-graduation in Economics from a reputed university. At the time when all her friends have established themselves in their career paths, Sheila was still struggling to stand on her feet. Yet, she has not given up.

Before joining this new company, Sheila was working as an advertisement professional and had already gained a fairly good level of experience (a total of 4 years) as a visualizer-cum-copywriter-cum-designer. Her last drawn salary was 12K in hand. After 7 months of gap due to an accident, she was compelled to accept a meagre salary of 8K in hand in this new company. Sheila had no choice, as she needed a job badly to finance her medical expenses.

Sheila was told by her seniors that she had to work hard to prove her worth to the company. Then only her salary will be raised. She thought after years of exploitation in advertisement firms who were paying her less, she now will be able to prove her worth to the world. What a damn fool she was to believe in those sugarcoated words of her seniors! 

Because of her experiences in advertisement agencies, Sheila was given the task of helping her senior designer with his assignments. She had to do visualization and make him design the posts accordingly, find the right images for him so that he can do the designs, and also do the pending works of him whenever he took leave.

Apart from that, Sheila had to write tests for social media posts, design social media posts, conceptualize new campaigns for each and every project that came, check the social media content of other contributing content writers in her team, plan, distribute and execute the assignments, etc. 

Sometimes she was also given the assignments of other teams too when their designer or copywriter was absent. Practically Sheila was working 24x7. But neither she complained nor did she give up. A salary of 8K was too little to motivate anybody in this field to work in this manner. But she did so to gain experience, improve her skills, and increase the salary to a level that is considered a 'standard'.

The ordeals begin

When Sheila started excelling in my work, her seniors got frightened. They would devise peculiar plans to distract her from my work. Plans like making noise while she was working, avoiding her when she was talking to them regarding work or any kind of normal discussion, hardly discussing with her about campaign ideation, etc. were executed. 

It was often observed that her senior designer would spend time gossiping with others. This led to a loss of time and workload used to build up. Sheila started feeling the pressure. Taking leaves without informing her was another plan devised by her designer. This would put her in an awkward position when time for prompt delivery was needed. All Sheila had to do was speed up my service and do two different types of work parallelly. 

This resulted in both physical and mental exhaustion. After around one year Sheila started to realize that they were deliberately making her feel exhausted in this manner so that she feel the compulsion to put down her resignation. Sheila hardly took leaves to relax as she observed that her team lead was not in favour of that before she completed the one-year cycle. But the team lead allowed the other designer to take leaves often. This was nothing but to build up more and more pressure on Sheila. Yet, she had not given up.

When they could not find any other means to deter her from her dedication and the quality of work she delivered, they started irritating her in every possible means so that she feels uncomfortable and lose her temper and they could prove she has a personality disorder. And that Sheila is a rude person, a misfit for that team, and incapable of handling certain situations. Yet, Sheila did not give up.

Her salary rose to 11K in hand after one year. But by that time Sheila felt she need a break and some fresh new types of work. She requested her team lead to consider her for new types of assignments like SEO works and PPC works so that she could learn and deliver more. The leader refused several times. This broke her heart.

The feelings

You know when you give so much to your team and your team lead refuses to allow you to excel, things definitely go wrong in your mind. Sheila started feeling that she was being fooled and exploited by each and everyone in the team. And then there was that designer who deliberately created a ruckus over a heated exchange of words. He complained about Sheila calling her rude. All were got up cases. 

Then on a fruitful day, things got worse. A group of content writers deliberately disturbed her during work by making noise. She complained to the team leader who took it as an opportunity to disgrace her in front of others. A short temper loss and an argument with her team leader landed Sheila in a situation where her team leader called her "a psycho" in front of others. 

Sheila was purposefully made to sit in a corner of another room, away from my team, alone, for the rest of the month. By that time Sheila had already put down her resignation when she understood she had nothing to gain from this team and the company.

So much of her efforts went to the gutter. Her dedication, experience level, eagerness to work hard, and her output quality, were not acceptable to agency people like these. To them what matters is the level of bootlicking and submissiveness one new office bearer shows to them. They are afraid of good, and ambitious workers. Why not! Their own lack of qualification and competitiveness would thus get revealed by people like us.

Conclusion

Most of the agency people here don't like improving their skills in what they have been appointed but improving their skills in office politics for certain. When they could compete with one they collectively devise plans to destroy the person's career by deliberately proving he/she is unworthy in the eyes of the higher authority. 

Again, most of the companies in our country and especially in the region where we live, fail to recognize the real contributors in their offices. Bootlicking has got into the nerves of so many here that it has practically become impossible to shine among them with your own abilities and experience levels. The HRs hardly go deep into the matters to understand what is really going on inside the team. The mental and physical health of a worker is nothing but a utopian concept here in this country and we, who are sensitive people, had to deal with these situations by either totally giving up jobs or trying to become another submissive bootlicker like them.